Summary: Karou has lived a double life for as long as she can remember. On Earth, she pretends to be a normal girl who pretends to be...something more. With her family she is....but what is she?

Review: I don't think I was in the mood for another teen supernatural romance right about now. So I think my rating is a bit lower than it should be. Regardless, I think this was a unique storyline with a romance that was deeper than your normal love-at-first-sight teen urban fantasies. A good story if you're in the mood for teen romance. The ending was a bit cliff-hangerish, though. ( )

Wow. Amazing. I can't wait for the second in the series to come out. This book was interesting and captivating. The story was fresh, the plot was well told and the characters really made you feel for them. ( )

(5) Sigh. A lend from a friend who seems to think I like YA novels This was tough for me. Reminded me of the Hunger Games Trilogy which while easily readable had zero literary merit. Karou is a strange adolescent girl in modern day Prague with blue hair and a penchant for disappearing on mysterious errands for beings we eventually find out are chimaera who raised her from a human baby, despite the fact that the chimaera are half-beast/half-human or some amalgam of different beasts. Karou meets a seraphim - apparently the arch enemies of chimaeras and she is mysteriously drawn to him. We learn this answer to this mystery as well as more about Karou's origins and the epic battle between chimaera and seraphim thoughout this . . well. . frankly ridiculous novel. But you need to take it with a grain of salt from me because I am not a fan of the fantasy genre with the exception of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

The writing was pedestrian, melodramatic and uninspiring. And I guessed the big reveal, I can definitely see that Hunger Games and Twilight fans will be all over this. But I am a grown-up now and simply don't enjoy this sort of thing. (I need to find a way to break it to my friend who keeps loaning me these type of books.) Not without interest and a modicum of suspense; but just not my thing. I doubt I will read the sequels. ( )

"Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic."

*takes deep, shuddering breath*

I-I...

*sighs*

Where do I start? How to begin? How could I possibly find words to describe this utterly beautiful, perfect story? Anything I say won't do [b:Daughter of Smoke and Bone|20706293|The Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy|Laini Taylor|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1393217615s/20706293.jpg|40026186] any justice.

It's one of those books that you just... have to read, to understand where the praise is coming from. It's not your typical story (although some aspects can be easily referred to as cliché) and it's woven with magic. It's a story within a story, and one that will hook you from page one.

Summary

"Errand requiring immediate attention. Come."

In general, Karou has managed to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand, she's a seventeen year old art student in Prague; on the other, errand-girl to a monstrous creature who is the closest thing she had to family. Raised half in our world, half in 'Elsewhere', she has never understood Brimstone's dark work now how she came into his keeping. She is a secret even to herself, plagued by the sensation that she isn't whole.

Now the doors to Elsewhere are closing, and Karou must choose between the safety of her human life and the dangers of a war-ravaged world that may hold the answers she has always sought.

When I first read the blurb, the first question I had was, "What is Elsewhere? Where is Elsewhere?" and it's a question that will plague you, dear reader, until the very end. The truth is, Elsewhere is Elsewhere. It has no place of it's own and, like in limbo, it is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Karou's not your typical heroine, but at the same time she is. She questions everything and everyone and constantly carries this feeling of being split, of not being whole, around on her small shoulders. She's an art student whose life is split in two and who seeks answers from her loved ones. So when the truth begins to leak in the form of black, scorched hand prints on Portal doors, she needs to make a decision.

And fast.

The setting

We're in Prague! No, really, it feels like you are. The cobblestones, the buildings, the shining sun on your skin... it feels so real when described by [a:Laini Taylor|324620|Laini Taylor|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1224474224p2/324620.jpg]

It feels so real, like you're walking alongside Karou. Everything is described in detail, but not so much as to bore you, just enough to paint a vivid, gorgeous picture in your mind's eye. It's the perfect setting for the book, and so pretty.

WHO WANTS TO GO?!

Karou

Goddamn, it's been a while. Who doesn't love a real, true, kick-ass heroine? A punky girl with blue hair and tattoos, that Karou. I immediately fell in love with her persona - she's funny, sweet but a real teenager in the sense that she will have a bitchfit if she feels like it. She doesn't take no for an answer, expresses wishes on little and is just awesome.

I loved her. I loved her sass (that is now a word, ok?), her bitch-please attitude towards her ex-boyfriend and I adored that she could turn from normal teenage girl to kick-ass, angel-fighting badass in a matter of seconds.

At the same moment, she became aware of the pulse in her palms that had made her curl her hands into fists at her first sight of him. It thrummed there still, a pent-up energy, and she was jolted by the certainty that it emanated from her tattoos. An impulse overcame her to throw up her hands, and she did, not in cringing surrender, but with palms powerfully outthrust, inked with the eyes she'd worn all her life without ever knowing why.

She has got to be my favourite MC of all time. You just can't get enough of her.

This is coming from someone who rarely becomes attached to an MC, purely because they're always so boring. Karou, though, is not.

Akiva

He's a sexy mofo. Like, really sexy. It's easy to believe that such sexiness/beauty/whatever you want to call it, because Akiva isn't normal.

He's an angel.

He's kickass (if not a bit whiny at times, but that's okay).

He's beautiful.

Into kohl-rimmed eyes in a sun-bronzed face. Fire-colored eyes with a charge like sparks that seared a path through the air and kindled it...

Angel indeed.He stood revealed. The blade of his long sword gleamed white from the incandescence of his wings - vast shimmering wings, their reach so great they swept the walls on either side of the alley, each feather like the wind-tugged lick of a candle flame.

Those eyes.

He's a perfect love interest and one you will love too.

Overall: a must read. If you're not into fantasy, magic or anything that isn't considered 'normal', then this isn't for you. But if you are... well, I have no idea what you're waiting for. Start reading already!

PS I will write a more coherent review at some point this week. Excuse my gushy fangirling feels.( )

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.

Dedication

First words

Walking to school over the snow-muffled cobbles, Karou had no sinister premonitions about the day.

Quotations

Humanity, perhaps, that quality of benevolence that humans have, without irony, named after themselves.

She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maidens at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox's tongue. She tastes like hope.

Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes it own magic.

If it's not chocolate, it's not breakfast.

Evanescence was not, in itself, a grim fate. It was the way of things, to be unmade; it happened in natural death, every day.

So you are a child of love. It seems right, that you were made by love.

There was almost always something to take delight in, if you were trying. But this was different. It couldn't be contained. She sometimes imagined it streaming out of her like light.

Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within her as a swallowed star.

Hope is the real magic, child.

You were true to her, even if she was not to you. Never repent of your own kindness, child. To stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.

Wikipedia in English (1)

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?